The libertarian case against TrumpKKK – I’m waiting

Deirdere McCloskey should be freaking out. A man called Trump threatens her world. McCloskey is not just the most eloquent but also the most thorough defender of the idea that ‘the bourgeois ethic’ and bourgeois virtues were crucial to the unprecedented prosperity of modern men and women – and improved our ethical standards in the process:

“Give masses of ordinary people equality before the law and equality of social dignity, and leave them alone, and it turns out that they become extraordinarily creative and energetic. … Since Karl Marx, we have made a habit of seeking material causes for human progress. But the modern world came from treating more and more people with respect…We need to inspirit masses of people, not the elite, who are plenty inspirited already. Equality before the law and equality of social dignity are still the root of economic, as well as spiritual, flourishing — whatever tyrants may think to the contrary “

Comes in: TrumpKKK (yes, let’s start a meme). A compulsive, serial insulter who takes pride in taking away the social dignity of people. Who disrespects people. Who dislikes the ordinary guy. Who lies and cheats, a serial embezzler, a fraud and a dangerous, corrupt man who can’t be trusted with the red button. A tyrant in the making. A man nurturing hate. A non-crypto fascist. I surely may have missed something but on the internet I could not find an eloquent libertarian manifesto by Deirdre against this man, who already is destroying everything Deirdre holds dear. Did I really miss something? Did other libertarians write it? What I’m reading on the Bleeding heart libertarians blog doesn’t suffice. Does anybody know?

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How it is that Trump’s ascendancy isn’t counter-evidence to “the bourgeois ethic” making for an ethical society seems a curiosity, at the least. But then again, my take on history is that people aren’t given “equality before the law” and etc. They take it through political struggle, the form of class struggle in bourgeois societies… as cliched as that sounds, and as cliched as is McClosky’s paean. And what exactly is a libertarian critic to say? The fact is, per them: He has the moral right to be the perfect asshole he is.

Isn’t democracy about the ‘process’; not about specific outcomes? If the the ‘cornerstones’ of democratic process are self-determination, sovereignty and majority rule, these depend precisely on inherent contingency of electoral outcomes. Should we not then respect the outcome irrespective of whether the people of ‘wherever’ want to elect Buddha or Ktulu as their leader? Otherwise we do not really respect democracy but use it only as a pretence, when it works for us, to legitimate imposition of our will on others. But then democracy is not obviously a process that maximises, utility, happiness or goodness.

As for facts about T, I have seen no evidence that he is racist and fascist, anymore than Hillary is racists and fascist. I personally find him crude but funny, and still marginally human, as opposed to H who is essentially Terminator. We know that T is no Buddha, but we also know that H is actually Ktulu. But it is not for me to decide but merely adapt to, no matter what the outcome.

I think Democracy is one of the exploitative institutions that world has ever seen. It has served the interests of the elite class all over the world. Culprits have taken its shield to hide their crimes. And poor have been fooled in the name of representation.

Well I’m a ‘dummie’, but after reading ‘The Empire of Cotton’, it seems that capitalism was born of slavery (and it’s various forms). And plutocrats find democracy the easiest form of government to manipulate.

If ‘eloquence’ equates to pleonasm McCloskey is eloquent indeed. Having just staggered my way through ‘Bourgeois Dignity’, I was principally struck by her skill in incessantly creating straw men to torch. The quotation above is a very good example of why no-one should take her remotely seriously as a historian.

Dear Guerrien, you do not need to take part in any such discussion if you prefer not to. Some of us happen to believe that ‘real-world economics’ should necessarily encompass those who could have a dramatic impact on economic policies in the real world. Surely the one thing on which we can all agree is that much of what is wrong with academic economics as currently practised is its persistent and pernicious failure to engage with the real world – including its rather tawdry political class which is largely a creature of economic circumstances, after all. Given that this is a watershed election in so many ways, it would be perverse to ignore it entirely.

Stiglitz in his book, “The Euro” has argued that the Euro crisis happened because of the political crisis. The disdain among the European countries was because they failed to build a political union. Polity and economics are interdependent. They will fail to exist singly. Yes one must be fair enough in forwarding a critical analysis.

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